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Super Bowl 2013 Media Day, a sports journalism feeding frenzy

Super Bowl 2013, John and Jim Harbaugh on New Orleans
Watch as Super Bowl 2013 competing coaches John and Jim Harbaugh offer their first impressions of New Orleans during Media Day at the Superdome, Jan. 29, 2013. Love the detail about Crescent City –born Jacoby Jones’ mom sending the team some home cooking.
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The Baltimore Ravens will have one advantage as they prepare for Super Bowl 2013 – a little New Orleans home cooking under their belts. During Tuesday’s Media Day extravaganza at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Ravens coach John Harbaugh said that he really had no impression of New Orleans, since all he’d seen so far was the inside of the hotel. However, he said, Crescent City-born kick-returner Jacoby Jones’ mom had brought over some jambalaya, mac n’ cheese, chicken and other delicacies. Harbaugh said he wasn’t sure what everything was called, but it was all good and there was lots of it.

Listen, if Jones’ mom would like to give me a call, I’d love to report on the Ravens’ New Orleans-style dinner in detail – 504.460.3492.

Speaking of dining. Media Day is a journalistic feeding frenzy for sports reporters. Star players and coaches take their places in small kiosks equipped with spotlights and microphones, where they answer questions shouted to them by schools of hungry journalists. Video cameras bob above the crowd like robots – imagine dozens of tall Wall-Es all competing for the best view. Less well-known athletes wander the field around the kiosks being interviewed willy-nilly. The artificial turf is a skein black spaghetti power chords. There’s no chronological order to things. Everything happens at once and everyone does his or her own thing, like the rehearsal for Charlie Brown’s Christmas pageant.

At Tuesday’s event, a few reporters were in costume. One was dressed as a superhero, another as a football referee, another as a clown, another wore a wrestler’s mask, still another wore a fur hat and faux leather medieval body armor. There was no obvious explanation. It didn’t seem especially unusual in New Orleans.

San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh is Ravens’ coach John Harbaugh’s kid brother. Their gentlemanly sibling rivalry is probably the most compelling story line of Super Bowl 47 – just in case you, somehow, haven’t heard. One of my favorite brotherhood questions was addressed to Jim. Are you worried your brother will know what you’re thinking, a reporter asked. I’m worried about a lot of things, Jim answered, but not that. John has never seemed clairvoyant.

Most of the time, the athletes and coaches that I heard speak, did their best to stay inside the hash marks, interview wise. They concentrated on sober speculation about football and the important game ahead. Which, of course, made it especially interesting when they did get sidetracked.

For instance, 49-year-old 49er Jim Harbaugh wistfully revealed a regret. He said that though his team has made it to the Super Bowl (perhaps the world’s premier athletic event), he’s in the worst physical condition of his life. I took this to mean that the demands of the job have prevented Harbaugh from getting the kind of exercise he’d like. That happens to a lot of us, of course, but it must be especially ironic when you manage a team of lean mean athletes, right?

Jim Harbaugh elevated the Q and A session by paraphrasing Shakespeare. Sure, he said, John is his actual brother, but all of the 49ers were like brothers as well. “For he who sheds his blood with me today shall be my brothers,” he said.

I was really hoping that John would summon up a little Edgar Allan Poe, but he did not. Instead, when a reporter told him of his brothers’ confident Shakespearean reference, John explained that Jim was a communication major in college, a history buff and a really smart guy.

Part of the fun of Media Day is mingling with on-air celebrities. I met Aaron Sanchez, a charming Food Network chef/star who was, not surprisingly, posing cuisine-based questions. Sanchez told me he used to work at K-Paul’s back in the early 90s. I didn't know that. Chef Paul Prudhomme, he said, was one of his great influences. He said that New Orleans still has a special place in his heart. He showed me a small fleur-de-lis tattooed on his knuckle. Attention visitors: Sanchez, who seems to know his New Orleans food, recommends Johnny’s Po-Boys, any John Besh establishment and the Creole Creamery (for ice cream).

Super Bowl 2013 celebrity encounter, Aaron SanchezFood Network star Aaron Sanchez posed cuisine-focused questions to the players and coaches during the Jan. 29 Super Bowl 2013 media day extravaganza in New Orleans. Watch as Sanchez describes his days in the Crescent City learning from chef Paul Prudhomme. Cut and paste this link to read Judy Walker's story about Sanchez www.nola.com/food/index.ssf/2011/10/post_73.html

I also saw comedian/interviewer Mo Rocca, whom I love listening to on a comedy radio show called “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” Rocca was attempting to get tackling advice from this huge, huge Ravens lineman. It was such a laugh. But let me warn you, Mo; I think that behind-the-knee-knockdown move you were working on will get you a 15-yard penalty, not to mention getting you squashed flatter than a pancake.

It’s too bad that the non-media football fans that paid to attend the event had to sit so far away from the action. I think the kiosks, group photo sessions and other attractions could have been set up closer to them. Why not?

As I mentioned earlier, most of the athletes did their best to conduct their interviews with a certain studied Bull Durham decorum. Not 49ers wide receiver Randy Moss. I wish I had been there when Moss declared himself the best receiver ever – as he reportedly did. By the time I got there, he was explaining how his reputation for brittle media relations came about. If we, the individual members of the press, were just able to have dinner with him, one on one, we’d have a whole different impression, he said.

I certainly hope not. Truth is, I dug Moss’s bad boy, Frank Sinatra, I-did-it-my-way persona at the press conference – he sprinkled Media Day with a some welcome cayenne, if you know what I mean. And I also loved how another player (I didn’t catch who) playfully wrestled him off the podium at the end of the interview.

Not that I agreed with everything Mr. Moss said, mind you. Asked about the choice of Super Bowl half-time entertainment, Moss said that the big game needs big acts like Beyonce. Celestial pop icons like that bring the crowd back sufficiently energized. You can’t just expect to get some band from some club, he said.

Randy, nothing against Beyonce, but with sufficient amplification the New Birth Brass Band (whom I saw in a club not long ago) or any number of New Orleans bands could raise the big white roof off this place and keep it up from the time you leave the field to the time you come back on. Promise.